STACK 

ANNEX 

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Towards  a  New  World 

Being  the  Reconstruction  Programme 
of  the  British  Labor  Party;  together 
with  an  Introductory  Article  by  Mr. 
Arthur  Henderson,  the  Leader  of  the 
Party,  and  a  Manifesto  to  the  Labor 
Movement  from  the  English  Fellow- 
ship of  Reconciliation 


//  it  a  dream  ? 

Nay  but  the  lack  of  it  the  dream, 

And  failing  it  life's  lore  and  wealth  a  dream, 

And  all  the  world  a  dream. 

WALT  WHITMAN. 


Wyoming,  New  York:   W.  R.  Browne 


Price  Twenty  Cents 


"A  very  remarkable  thing  is  happening  in  America.  Liberals  and 
radicals  of  all  shades  and  degrees  of  opinion  are  finding  a  common 
ground,  and  see  before  them  a  common  road  leading  to  that  new 
social  order  of  which  we  have  dreamed  and  toward  which  we  have 
striven  so  long  without  hope  of  arriving  at  our  destination  in  this 
generation  or  the  next.  That  common  ground  is  the  program  of 
the  British  Labor  Party.  It  has  electrified  liberal  America  as  the 
speeches  of  President  Wilson  have  electrified  liberal  Europe.  And 
if  liberal  Europe  looks  to  Wilson  today  as  a  Moses,  we  in  turn  look 
to  the  British  Labor  Party's  program  as  the  Ten  Commandments. 
Yet  the  strength  of  them  is  that  they  are  not  commandments, 
nor  dogmas,  nor  final  things,  but  a  successful  attempt  to  strike 
at  the  roots  without  attempting  the  impossible,  and  to  be  con- 
structive without  being  trivial  and  merely  ameliorative.  It  is  that 
thing  for  which  we  have  waited  so  long, — a  program  practicable 
enough  for  today  and  tomorrow,  yet  radical  enough  to  bring  our 
ultimate  destination  within  view."  THE  PUBLIC  (New  York). 


"The  Report  on  Reconstruction  of  the  British  Labor  Party  is 
probably  the  most  mature  and  carefully  formulated  programme 
ever  put  forth  by  a  responsible  political  party.  It  is  the  result  of 
an  exhaustive  criticism  of  the  whole  English  experience  in  social 
legislation  during  the  past  four  generations.  It  is  the  result  of  a 
careful  discrimination  between  what  the  state  can  and  must  do  in 
order  to  bring  about  social  improvement  and  what  the  contribu- 
tion must  be  of  the  workers  themselves.  It  is  the  result  of  an 
adjustment  between  many  opinions  and  interests, whose  conflicts 
in  the  past  have  impaired  the  unity  and  hampered  the  growth  of 
the  British  labor  movement.  It  is,  consequently,  at  once  an  his- 
torical, a  scientific  and  a  political  document  which,  although  it 
was  worded  by  a  sub-committee,  was  written  as  a  result  of  the 
sufferings,  the  struggles,  the  experiments,  the  failures,  the  suc- 
cesses, the  aspirations  and  the  thinking  of  the  British  wage-earn- 
ing class  during  its  four  generations  of  conscious  development.  .  . 
If  the  American  people  are  too  limited  or  too  blind  to  admit  a 
programme  of  this  kind  into  serious  political  discussion,  they  will 
only  provoke  and  even  justify  a  far  more  drastic  and  dangerous 
kind  of  agitation.  The  social  reconstruction  proposed  in  this 
programme  is  not  put  forth  by  some  little  group  of  social  reform- 
ers or  of  anti-social  revolutionists.  It  is  proposed  as  the  platform 
for  one  of  the  most  powerful  parties  in  Great  Britain — a  party 
which  will  contest  almost  every  constituency  in  the  coming  general 
election  and  which,  unless  it  is  opposed  by  a  coalition,  may  elect 
a  majority  to  the  House  of  Commons." 

THE  NEW  REPUBLIC  (New  York). 


Towards  a  New  World 

Being  the  Reconstruction  Programme 
of  the  British  Labor  Party;  together 
with  an  Introductory  Article  by  Mr. 
Arthur  Henderson,  the  Leader  of  the 
Party,  and  a  Manifesto  to  the  Labor 
Movement  from  the  English  Fellow- 
ship of  Reconciliation 


Is  it  a  dream  ? 

Nay  but  the  lack  of  it  the  dream. 

And  failing  it  life's  lore  and  wealth  a  dream. 

And  all  the  world  a  dream. 

WALT  WHITMAN. 


Wyoming,  New  York:   W.  R.  Browne 


Down  came  the  storm!    In  ruin  fell 
The  outworn  world  we  knew. 

It  passed,  that  elemental  swell! 
Again  appeared  the  blue. 

The  sun  shone  in  the  new-wash 'd  sky- 
And  what  from  heaven  saw  he? 

Blocks  of  the  past,  like  icebergs  high, 
Float  in  a  rolling  sea. 


He  melts  the  icebergs  of  the  past, 
A  green,  new  earth  appears. 

Millions,  whose  life  in  ice  lay  fast, 
Have  thoughts  and  smiles  and  tears. 

The  world's  great  order  dawns  in  sheen 

After  long  darkness  rude, 
Divinelier  imaged,  clearer  seen, 

With  happier  zeal  pursued. 


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STACK 
ANNEX 


INTRODUCTORY 

L 


REBUILDING  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

BY  ARTHUR  HENDERSON 
LEADER  OF  THE  BRITISH  LABOR  PARTY 

WHEN  victory  in  the  sense  of  the  collapse  of 
the  military  power  in  the  Central  Empires 
is  at  last  achieved,  we  shall  be  confronted  with 
the  task  of  translating  military  success  into  its  political, 
economic,  and  social  equivalents  in  this  country  and  every 
other.  It  will  not  be  a  democratic  victory  if  it  results 
merely  in  the  restoration  of  the  capitalistic  regime  which 
the  war  has  discredited  and  destroyed.  Victory  for  the 
people  means  something  more  than  the  continuance  of  the 
old  system  of  production  for  the  profit  of  a  small  owning 
class,  on  the  basis  of  wage-slavery  for  the  producing  classes. 
The  hard,  cruel,  competitive  system  of  production  must 
be  replaced  by  a  system  of  co-operation  under  which  the 
status  of  the  workers  will  be  revolutionized,  and  in  which 
the  squalor  and  poverty,  the  economic  insecurity  and  social 
miseries  of  the  past  will  have  no  place.  This  is  the'  great 
task  before  the  statesmen  and  politicians  of  the  future. 

Then  we  must  remember  that  the  coming  period  of 
reconstruction,  even  more  than  the  remaining  period  of 
the  war,  will  impose  upon  the  leaders  of  all  the  civilized 
States  new  and  searching  tests  of  character  and  intellect. 
As  we  draw  nearer  to  the  end  of  the  war  we  begin  to  see 

[3] 


more  clearly  the  magnitude  of  the  problems  that  peace 
will  bring.  So  vast,  intricate,  and  fundamental  have  been 
the  changes  wrought  during  the  last  three  and  a  half 
years  that  we  are  sometimes  tempted  to  think  the  will  and 
intelligence  of  men  will  be  unequal  to  the  task  of  dealing 
with  them. 

Still  more  may  we  fear  sometimes  that  the  problems 
of  reconstruction  will  be  handled  by  men  too  impatient 
to  think  things  through,  too  tired  and  cynical  to  respond 
to  the  glowing  faith  in  a  finer  future  for  the  world  which 
now  inspires  the  multitudes  of  common  people  who  have 
striven  so  heroically  and  suffered  so  patiently  during  the 
war.  For  national  leadership  to  fall  into  the  hands  of 
such  men  in  the  great  new  days  upon  which  we  shall  pres- 
ently enter  would  be  a  disaster  almost  as  great  as  the  war 
itself. 

If  there  could  be  anything  worse  than  an  empiric  in 
control  of  State  policy  when  peace  comes,  it  would  be  the 
influence  of  a  cynic  upon  the  splendid  enthusiasm  and 
revolutionary  ardor  of  democracy,  newly  awakened  to  a 
consciousness  of  its  power  and  eager  to  build  a  better  future 
for  mankind. 

The  outstanding  fact  of  world  politics  at  the  present 
time — and  when  peace  comes  this  fact  will  be  made  more 
clear — is  that  a  great  tide  of  revolutionary  feeling  is  rising 
in  every  country.  Everywhere  the  peoples  are  becoming 
conscious  of  power.  They  are  beginning  to  sit  in  judg- 
ment upon  their  rulers.  They  are  beginning  to  ask  ques- 
tions about  the  policies  that  have  brought  the  world  to  the 
edge  of  secular  ruin. 

In  this  war  the  people  have  shown  themselves  capable 
of  heroic  sacrifices  and  resolute  endurance  because  they 
love  liberty  and  desire  peace.  The  hope  that  the  issue  of 

[41 


this  war  will  be  an  increase  of  freedom,  not  only  for 
themselves,  but  for  those  who  have  lived  under  the  yoke 
of  alien  tyrannies,  has  sustained  the  people  throughout 
these  years  of  war.  It  has  caused  them  to  pour  out  the 
blood '  of  their  best  and  bravest,  to  surrender  hard-won 
liberties,  to  toil  unremittingly  in  factory,  field,  and  mine, 
to  spend  without  stint  the  material  wealth  accumulated 
through  years  of  peace  and  prosperity. 

But  the  people  will  not  choose  to  entrust  their  destinies 
at  the  Peace  Conference  to  statesmen  who  have  not  per- 
ceived the  moral  significance  of  the  struggle,  and  who  are 
not  prepared  to  make  a  people's  peace.  We  want  to  re- 
place the  material  force  of  arms  by  the  moral  force  of  right 
in  the  governance  of  the  world.  For  that  great  task  of 
the  immediate  future  we  want  national  leaders  who  are 
not  only  responsive  to  the  inspirations  and  impulses  of 
democracy,  but  who  are  qualified  to  guide  the  mighty 
energies  of  democracy  in  the  task  of  building  up  the  new 
social  order. 

Never  before  have  the  people  been  confronted  with 
problems  of  greater  magnitude,  international  and  national, 
economic  and  political,  social  and  personal ;  but  never  have 
they  had  so  good  an  opportunity  of  taking  hold  of  these 
problems  for  themselves.  The  policies  and  programmes 
of  the  orthodox  parties  have  little  relevance  to  the  new 
situation.  Political  parties  bound  by  tradition,  saturated 
with  class  prejudice,  out  of  touch  with  the  living  move- 
ments of  thought  and  feeling  among  the  people,  cannot 
easily  adapt  themselves  to  the  changed  conditions,  the  new 
demands,  the  enlarged  ideals  to  which  the  war  has  given 
rise. 

The  party  of  the  future,  upon  which  the  chief  tasks  of 
reconstruction  will  devolve,  will  be  the  one  which  derives 

[5] 


directly  from  the  people  themselves,  and  has  been  made 
the  organ  of  the  people's  will,  the  voice  of  all  the  people — 
of  both  sexes  and  all  classes — who  work  by  hand  or  brain. 

Through  such  a  party,  led  by  democratically  chosen 
leaders  who  have  proved  their  fidelity  to  principle  and 
their  faith  in  the  people's  cause,  the  best  spirits  of  our 
time  will  be  able  to  work  as  they  have  never  been  able  to 
work  in  the  orthodox  parties  of  the  past.  Nothing  but 
disunity  and  divided  counsels  in  the  democratic  movement 
can  wreck  the  promise  of  the  future.  For  every  man  and 
woman  who  believes  in  democracy  and  who  desires  to  see 
a  new  birth  of  freedom  there  is  a  place  in  the  people's 
movement  and  a  well-defined  work  to  do. 

In  a  wider  sense  than  has  hitherto  been  understood,  the 
politics  of  the  future  will  be  human  politics,  and  the  dom- 
inating party  will  be  the  party  of  the  common  people,  and 
of  democracy.  This  is  certain.  The  people  will  have  it 
so,  for  the  people  are  weary  of  wars.  They  have  borne 
too  long  the  inequalities  and  injustices  inherent  in  an  eco- 
nomic system  based  on  competition  instead  of  co-operation. 

They  are  coming  together  in  a  more  powerfully  organ- 
ized movement  to  achieve  a  new  freedom,  and  to  establish 
on  this  earth,  drenched  with  men's  blood,  torn  with  men's 
struggles,  wet  with  human  tears,  a  fairer  ideal  of  life; 
an  ideal  dominated  not  by  any  spirit  of  revenge  or  hatred, 
expressing  itself  in  economic  and  financial  boycott,  but  in 
love,  brotherhood,  and  peace. 

(From  "The  Methodist  Times,"  London) 


[6] 


THE  RECONSTRUCTION  PROGRAMME 

OF  THE 

BRITISH  LABOR  PARTY 

IT  BEHOOVES  the  Labor  party,  in  formulating  its  own 
programme  for  reconstruction  after  the  war,  and  in 
criticizing  the  various  preparations  and  plans  that  are 
being  made  by  the  present  government,  to  look  at  the  prob- 
lem as  a  whole.     We  have  to  make  clear  what  it  is  that 
we  wish  to  construct.     It  is  important  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that,  whatever  may  be  the  case  with  regard  to  other 
political  parties,  our  detailed  practical  proposals  proceed 
from  definitely  held  principles. 

THE  END  OF  A  CIVILIZATION 

We  need  to  beware  of  patchwork.  The  view  of  the 
Labor  party  is  that  what  has  to  be  reconstructed  after  the 
war  is  not  this  or  that  government  department,  or  this  or 
that  piece  of  social  machinery ;  but,  so  far  as  Britain  is  con- 
cerned, society  itself.  The  individual  worker,  or  for  that 
matter  the  individual  statesman,  immersed  in  daily  routine 
— like  the  individual  soldier  in  a  battle — easily  fails  to 
understand  the  magnitude  and  far-reaching  importance  of 
what  is  taking  place  around  him.  How  does  it  fit  together 
as  a  whole?  How  does  it  look  from  a  distance?  Count 
Okuma,  one  of  the  oldest,  most  experienced,  and  ablest  of 
the  statesmen  of  Japan,  watching  the  present  conflict  from 

[7] 


the  other  side  of  the  globe,  declares  it  to  be  nothing  less 
than  the  death  of  European  civilization.  Just  as  in  the 
past  the  civilization  of  Babylon,  Egypt,  Greece,  Carthage, 
and  the  great  Roman  empire  have  been  successively  de- 
stroyed, so,  in  the  judgment  of  this  detached  observer,  the 
civilization  of  all  Europe  is  even  now  receiving  its  death 
blow.  We  of  the  Labor  party  can  so  far  agree  in  this 
estimate  as  to  recognize,  in  the  present  world  catastrophe, 
if  not  the  death,  in  Europe,  of  civilization  itself,  at  any 
rate  the  culmination  and  collapse  of  a  distinctive  industrial 
civilization,  which  the  workers  will  not  seek  to  reconstruct. 
At  such  times  of  crisis  it  is  easier  to  slip  into  ruin  than  to 
progress  into  higher  forms  of  organization.  That  is  the 
problem  as  it  presents  itself  to  the  Labor  party. 

What  this  war  is  consuming  is  not  merely  the  security, 
the  homes,  the  livelihood  and  the  lives  of  millions  of  inno- 
cent families,  and  an  enormous  proportion  of  all  the  accu- 
mulated wealth  of  the  world,  but  also  the  very  basis  of  the 
peculiar  social  order  in  which  it  has  arisen.  The  indi- 
vidualist system  of  capitalist  production,  based  on  the  pri- 
vate ownership  and  competitive  administration  of  land  and 
capital,  with  its  reckless  "pr°fiteering"  and  wage-slavery; 
with  its  glorification  of  the  unhampered  struggle  for  the 
means  of  life  and  its  hypocritical  pretense  of  the  "survival 
of  the  fittest";  with  the  monstrous  inequality  of  circum- 
stances which  it  produces  and  the  degradation  and  brutal- 
ization,  both  moral  and  spiritual,  resulting  therefrom,  may, 
we  hope,  indeed  have  received  a  death  blow.  With  it  must 
go  the  political  system  and  ideas  in  which  it  naturally 
found  expression.  We  of  the  Labor  party,  whether  in 
opposition  or  in  due  time  called  upon  to  form  an  admin- 
istration, will  certainly  lend  no  hand  to  its  revival.  On 
the  contrary,  we  shall  do  our  utmost  to  see  that  it  is  buried 

[8] 


with  the  millions  whom  it  has  done  to  death.  If  we  in 
Britain  are  to  escape  from  the  decay  of  civilization  itself, 
which  the  Japanese  statesman  foresees,  we  must  ensure 
that  what  is  presently  to  be  built  up  is  a  new  social  order, 
based  not  on  fighting  but  on  fraternity;  not  on  the  com- 
petitive struggle  for  the  means  of  bare  life,  but  on  a 
deliberately  planned  co-operation  in  production  and  distri- 
bution for  the  benefit  of  all  who  participate  by  hand  or  by 
brain ;  not  on  the  utmost  possible  inequality  of  riches,  but 
on  a  systematic  approach  towards  a  healthy  equality  of 
material  circumstances  for  every  person  born  into  the 
world ;  not  on  an  enforced  dominion  over  subject  nations, 
subject  races,  subject  colonies,  subject  classes,  or  a  subject 
sex,  but,  in  industry  as  well  as  in  government,  on  that 
equal  freedom,  that  general  consciousness  of  consent,  and 
that  widest  possible  participation  in  power,  both  economic 
and  political,  which  is  characteristic  of  democracy.  We 
do  not,  of  course,  pretend  that  it  is  possible,  even  after 
the  drastic  clearing  away  that  is  now  going  on,  to  build 
society  anew  in  a  year  or  two  of  feverish  "reconstruction." 
What  the  Labor  party  intends  to  satisfy  itself  about  is  that 
each  brick  that  it  helps  to  lay  shall  go  to  erect  the  structure 
that  it  intends,  and  no  other. 

THE  PILLARS  OF  THE  HOUSE 

We  need  not  here  recapitulate,  one  by  one,  the  different 
items  in  the  Labor  party's  programme,  which  successive 
party  conferences  have  adopted.  These  proposals,  some  of 
them  in  various  publications  worked  out  in  practical  detail, 
are  often  carelessly  derided  as  impracticable,  even  by  the 
politicians  who  steal  them  piecemeal  from  us !  The  mem- 
bers of  the  Labor  party,  themselves  actually  working  by 

[9] 


hand  or  by  brain,  in  close  contact  with  the  facts,  have  per- 
haps at  all  times  a  more  accurate  appreciation  of  what  is 
practicable,  in  industry  as  in  politics,  than  those  who 
depend  solely  on  academic  instruction  or  are  biased  by 
great  possessions.  But  today  no  man  dares  to  say  that 
anything  is  impracticable.  The  war,  which  has  scared 
the  old  political  parties  right  out  of  their  dogmas,  has 
taught  every  statesman  and  every  government  official,  to 
his  enduring  surprise,  how  very  much  more  can  be  done 
along  the  lines  that  we  have  laid  down  than  he  had  ever 
before  thought  possible.  What  we  now  promulgate  as  our 
policy,  whether  for  opposition  or  for  office,  is  not  merely 
this  or  that  specific  reform,  but  a  deliberately  thought  out, 
systematic,  and  comprehensive  plan  for  that  immediate 
social  rebuilding  which  any  ministry,  whether  or  not  it 
desires  to  grapple  with  the  problem,  will  be  driven  to 
undertake.  The  four  pillars  of  the  house  that  we  propose 
to  erect,  resting  upon  the  common  foundation  of  the 
democratic  control  of  society  in  all  its  activities,  may  be 
termed : 

(a)  The  Universal  Enforcement  of  the  National  Mini- 
mum; 

(b)  The  Democratic  Control  of  Industry; 

(c)  The  Revolution  in  National  Finance;  and 
(</)   The  Surplus  Wealth  for  the  Common  Good. 

THE  UNIVERSAL  ENFORCEMENT  OF  A  NATIONAL 
MINIMUM 

The  first  principle  of  the  Labor  party — in  significant 
contrast  with  those  of  the  capitalist  system,  whether 
expressed  by  the  Liberal  or  by  the  Conservative  party — 
is  the  securing  to  every  member  of  the  community,  in  good 

[to] 


times  and  bad  alike  (and  not  only  to  the  strong  and  able, 
the  well  born  or  the  fortunate),  of  all  the  requisites  of 
healthy  life  and  worthy  citizenship.  This  is  in  no  sense  a 
"class"  proposal.  Such  an  amount  of  social  protection  of 
the  individual,  however  poor  and  lowly,  from  birth  to 
death,  is,  as  the  economist  now  knows,  as  indispensable 
to  fruitful  cooperation  as  it  is  to  successful  combination; 
and  it  affords  the  only  complete  safeguard  against  that 
insidious  degradation  of  the  standard  of  life  which  is  the 
worst  economic  and  social  calamity  to  which  any  com- 
munity can  be  subjected.  We  are  members  one  of  another. 
No  man  liveth  to  himself  alone.  If  any,  even  the 
humblest,  is  made  to  suffer,  the  whole  community  and 
every  one  of  us,  whether  or  not  we  recognize  the  fact,  is 
thereby  injured.  Generation  after  generation  this  has  been 
the  corner-stone  of  the  faith  of  Labor.  It  will  be  the 
guiding  principle  of  any  Labor  government. 

The  Legislative  Regulation  of  Employment 

Thus  it  is  that  the  Labor  party  today  stands  for  the 
universal  application  of  the  policy  of  the  national  mini- 
mum, to  which  (as  embodied  in  the  successive  elaborations 
of  the  Factory,  Mines,  Railways,  Shops,  Merchant  Ship- 
ping, and  Truck  acts,  the  Public  Health,  Housing,  and 
Education  acts,  and  the  Minimum  Wage  act, — all  of  them 
aiming  at  the  enforcement  of  at  least  the  prescribed  mini- 
mum of  leisure,  health,  education,  and  subsistence)  the 
spokesmen  of  Labor  have  already  gained  the  support  of 
the  enlightened  statesmen  and  economists  of  the  world. 
All  these  laws  purporting  to  protect  against  extreme 
degradation  of  the  standard  of  life  need  considerable  im- 
provement and  extension,  whilst  their  administration 


leaves  much  to  be  desired.  For  instance,  the  Workmen's 
Compensation  act  fails  shamefully,  not  merely  to  secure 
proper  provision  for  all  the  victims  of  accident  and  indus- 
trial disease,  but  what  is  much  more  important,  does  not 
succeed  in  preventing  their  continual  increase.  The 
amendment  and  consolidation  of  the  Factory  and  Work- 
shops acts,  with  their  extension  to  all  employed  persons, 
is  long  overdue,  and  it  will  be  the  policy  of  Labor  greatly 
to  strengthen  the  staff  of  inspectors,  especially  by  the  addi- 
tion of  more  men  and  women  of  actual  experience  of  the 
workshop  and  the  mine.  The  Coal  Mines  (Minimum 
Wage)  act  must  certainly  be  maintained  in  force,  and 
suitably  amended,  so  as  both  to  ensure  greater  uniformity 
of  conditions  among  the  several  districts,  and  to  make  the 
district  minimum  in  all  cases  an  effective  reality.  The 
same  policy  will,  in  the  interests  of  the  agricultural  labor- 
ers, dictate  the  perpetuation  of  the  Legal  Wage  clauses  of 
the  new  Corn  law  just  passed  for  a  term  of  five  years, 
and  the  prompt  amendment  of  any  defects  that  may  be 
revealed  in  their  working.  And,  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
many  millions  of  wage-earners,  notably  women  and  the 
less  skilled  workmen  in  various  occupations,  are  unable  by 
combination  to  obtain  wages  adequate  for  decent  mainten- 
ance in  health,  the  Labor  party  intends  to  see  to  it  that 
the  Trade  Boards  act  is  suitably  amended  and  made  to 
apply  to  all  industrial  employments  in  which  any  consid- 
erable number  of  those  employed  obtain  less  than  thirty 
shillings  per  week.  This  minimum  of  not  less  than  thirty 
shillings  per  week  (which  will  need  revision  according  to 
the  level  of  prices)  ought  to  be  the  very  lowest  statutory 
base  line  for  the  least  skilled  adult  workers,  men  or  women, 
in  any  occupation,  in  all  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom. 


The  Organization  of  Demobilization 

But  the  coming  industrial  dislocation,  which  will  in- 
evitably follow  the  discharge  from  war  service  of  half  of 
all  the  working  population,  imposes  new  obligations  upon 
the  community.  The  demobilization  and  discharge  of  the 
eight  million  wage-earners  now  being  paid  from  public 
funds,  either  for  service  with  the  colors  or  in  munition 
work  and  other  war  trades,  will  bring  to  the  whole  wage- 
earning  class  grave  peril  of  unemployment,  reduction  of 
wages,  and  a  lasting  degradation  of  the  standard  of  life, 
which  can  be  prevented  only  by  deliberate  national  organ- 
ization. The  Labor  party  has  repeatedly  called  upon 
the  present  government  to  formulate  its  plan,  and  to  make 
in  advance  all  arrangements  necessary  for  coping  with  so 
unparalleled  a  dislocation.  The  policy  to  which  the  Labor 
party  commits  itself  is  unhesitating  and  uncompromising. 
It  is  plain  that  regard  should  be  had,  in  stopping  govern- 
ment orders,  reducing  the  staff  of  the  national  factories, 
and  demobilizing  the  army,  to  the  actual  state  of  employ- 
ment in  particular  industries  and  in  different  districts,  so 
as  both  to  release  first  the  kinds  of  labor  most  urgently 
required  for  the  revival  of  peace  production,  and  to  pre- 
vent any  congestion  of  the  market.  It  is  no  less  impera- 
tive that  suitable  provision  against  being  turned  suddenly 
adrift  without  resources  should  be  made,  not  only  for  the 
soldiers,  but  also  for  the  three  million  operatives  in  muni- 
tion work  and  other  war  trades,  who  will  be  discharged 
long  before  most  of  the  army  can  be  disbanded.  On  this 
important  point,  which  is  the  most  urgent  of  all,  the  pres- 
ent government  has,  we  believe,  down  to  the  present  hour, 
formulated  no  plan,  and  come  to  no  decision,  and  neither 
the  Liberal  nor  the  Conservative  party  has  apparently 

[13] 


deemed  the  matter  worthy  of  agitation.  Any  government 
which  should  allow  the  discharged  soldier  or  munition 
worker  to  fall  into  the  clutches  of  charity  or  the  Poor  law 
would  have  to  be  instantly  driven  from  office  by  an  out- 
burst of  popular  indignation.  What  every  one  of  them 
will  look  for  is  a  situation  in  accordance  with  his  capacity. 

Securing  Employment  for  All 

The  Labor  party  insists — as  no  other  political  party 
has  thought  fit  to  do — that  the  obligation  to  find  suitable 
employment  in  productive  work  for  all  these  men  and 
women  rests  upon  the  government  for  the  time  being.  The 
work  of  re-settling  the  disbanded  soldiers  and  discharged 
munition  workers  into  new  situations  is  a  national  obliga- 
tion ;  and  the  Labor  party  emphatically  protests  against 
its  being  regarded  as  a  matter  for  private  charity.  It 
strongly  objects  to  this  public  duty  being  handed  over 
either  to  committees  of  philanthropists  or  benevolent 
societies,  or  to  any  of  the  military  or  recruiting  au- 
thorities. The  policy  of  the  Labor  party  in  this  matter 
is  to  make  the  utmost  use  of  the  trade  unions,  and,  equally 
for  the  brainworkers,  of  the  various  professional  associa- 
tions. In  view  of  the  fact  that,  in  any  trade,  the  best 
organization  for  placing  men  in  situations  is  a  national 
trade  union  having  local  branches  throughout  the  kingdom, 
every  soldier  should  be  allowed,  if  he  chooses,  to  have  a 
duplicate  of  his  industrial  discharge  notice  sent,  one  month 
before  the  date  fixed  for  his  discharge,  to  the  secretary  of 
the  trade  union  to  which  he  belongs  or  wishes  to  belong. 
Apart  from  this  use  of  the  trade  union  (and  a  correspond- 
ing use  of  the  professional  association)  the  government 
must,  of  course,  avail  itself  of  some  such  public  machinery 

['4] 


as  that  of  the  employment  exchanges ;  but  before  the  exist- 
ing exchanges  (which  will  need  to  be  greatly  extended) 
can  receive  the  cooperation  and  support  of  the  organized 
Labor  movement,  without  which  their  operations  can 
never  be  fully  successful,  it  is  imperative  that  they  should 
be  drastically  reformed,  on  the  lines  laid  down  in  the 
Demobilization  Report  of  the  "Labor  After  the  War" 
Joint  Committee;  and,  in  particular,  that  each  exchange 
should  be  placed  under  the  supervision  and  control  of  a 
joint  committee  of  employers  and  trade  unionists  in  equal 
numbers. 

The  responsibility  of  the  government,  for  the  time  being, 
in  the  grave  industrial  crisis  that  demobilization  will  pro- 
duce, goes,  however,  far  beyond  the  eight  million  men  and 
women  whom  the  various  departments  will  suddenly  dis- 
charge from  their  own  service.  The  effect  of  this  peremp- 
tory discharge  on  all  the  other  workers  has  also  to  be 
taken  into  account.  To  the  Labor  party  it  will  seem  the 
supreme  concern  of  the  government  of  the  day  to  see  to  it 
that  there  shall  be,  as  a  result  of  the  gigantic  "General 
Post"  which  it  will  itself  have  deliberately  set  going,  no- 
where any  degradation  of  the  standard  of  life.  The  gov- 
ernment has  pledged  itself  to  restore  the  trade  union  con- 
ditions and  "pre-war  practices"  of  the  workshop,  which 
the  trade  unions  patriotically  gave  up  at  the  direct  request 
of  the  government  itself;  and  this  solemn  pledge  must 
be  fulfilled,  of  course,  in  the  spirit  as  well  as  in  the  letter. 
The  Labor  party,  moreover,  holds  it  to  be  the  duty  of  the 
government  of  the  day  to  take  all  necessary  steps  to  pre- 
vent the  standard  rates  of  wages,  in  any  trade  or  occupa- 
tion whatsoever,  from  suffering  any  reduction,  relatively 
to  the  contemporary  cost  of  living.  Unfortunately,  the 
present  government,  like  the  Liberal  and  Conservative 


parties,  so  far  refuses  to  speak  on  this  important  matter 
with  any  clear  voice.  We  claim  that  it  should  be  a  cardi- 
nal point  of  government  policy  to  make  it  plain  to  every 
capitalist  employer  that  any  attempt  to  reduce  the  cus- 
tomary rates  of  wages  when  peace  comes,  or  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  dislocation  of  demobilization  to  worsen  the 
conditions  of  employment  in  any  grade  whatsoever,  will 
certainly  lead  to  embittered  industrial  strife,  which  will 
be  in  the  highest  degree  detrimental  to  the  national  inter- 
ests; and  that  the  government  of  the  day  will  not  hesitate 
to  take  all  necessary  steps  to  avert  such  a  calamity.  In  the 
great  impending  crisis  the  government  of  the  day  should 
not  only,  as  the  greatest  employer  of  both  brainworkers 
and  manual  workers,  set  a  good  example  in  this  respect, 
but  should  also  actively  seek  to  influence  private  employ- 
ers by  proclaiming  in  advance  that  it  will  not  itself  attempt 
to  lower  the  standard  rates  of  conditions  in  public  employ- 
ment; by  announcing  that  it  will  insist  on  the  most  rigor- 
ous observance  of  the  fair  wages  clause  in  all  public  con- 
tracts, and  by  explicitly  recommending  every  local  author- 
ity to  adopt  the  same  policy. 

But  nothing  is  more  dangerous  to  the  standard  of  life, 
or  so  destructive  of  those  minimum  conditions  of  healthy 
existence,  which  must  in  the  interests  of  the  community 
be  assured  to  every  worker,  than  any  widespread  or  con- 
tinued unemployment.  It  has  always  been  a  fundamental 
principle  of  the  Labor  party  (a  point  on  which,  significant- 
ly enough,  it  has  not  been  followed  by  either  of  the  other 
political  parties)  that,  in  a  modern  industrial  community, 
it  is  one  of  the  foremost  obligations  of  the  government  to 
find,  for  every  willing  worker,  whether  by  hand  or  by 
brain,  productive  work  at  standard  rates. 

It  is  accordingly  the  duty  of  the  government  to  adopt 
[16] 


a  policy  of  deliberately  and  systematically  preventing  the 
occurrence  of  unemployment,  instead  of,  as  heretofore, 
letting  unemployment  occur,  and  then  seeking,  vainly  and 
expensively,  to  relieve  the  unemployed.  It  is  now  known 
that  the  government  can,  if  it  chooses,  arrange  the  public 
works  and  the  orders  of  national  departments  and  local 
authorities  in  such  a  way  as  to  maintain  the  aggregate  de- 
mand for  labor  in  the  whole  kingdom  (including  that  of 
capitalist  employers)  approximately  at  a  uniform  level 
from  year  to  year ;  and  it  is  therefore  a  primary  obligation 
of  the  government  to  prevent  any  considerable  or  wide- 
spread fluctuations  in  the  total  numbers  employed  in  times 
of  good  or  bad  trade.  But  this  is  not  all.  In  order  to  pre- 
pare for  the  possibility  of  there  being  any  unemployment, 
either  in  the  course  of  demobilization  or  in  the  first  years 
of  peace,  it  is  essential  that  the  government  should  make 
all  necessary  preparations  for  putting  instantly  in  hand, 
directly  or  through  the  local  authorities,  such  urgently 
needed  public  works  as  (a)  the  rehousing  of  the  popula- 
tion alike  in  rural  districts,  mining  villages,  and  town 
slums,  to  the  extent,  possibly,  of  a  million  new  cottages 
and  an  outlay  of  three  hundred  millions  sterling;  (b)  the 
immediate  making  good  of  the  shortage  of  schools,  training 
colleges,  technical  colleges,  etc.,  and  the  engagement  of 
the  necessary  additional  teaching,  clerical,  and  administra- 
tive staffs;  (c)  new  roads;  (d)  light  railways;  (e)  the 
unification  and  reorganization  of  the  railway  and  canal 
system;  (/)  afforestation;  (g}  the  reclamation  of  land; 
(A)  the  development  and  better  equipment  of  our  ports 
and  harbors;  (*)  the  opening  up  of  access  to  land  by  coop- 
erative small  holdings  and  in  other  practicable  ways. 
Moreover,  in  order  to  relieve  any  pressure  of  an  over- 
stocked labor  market,  the  opportunity  should  be  taken,  if 

[17] 


unemployment  should  threaten  to  become  widespread,  (a) 
immediately  to  raise  the  school-leaving  age  to  sixteen;  (b) 
greatly  to  increase  the  number  of  scholarships  and  burs- 
aries for  secondary  and  higher  education;  and  (c)  sub- 
stantially to  shorten  the  hours  of  labor  of  all  young  per- 
sons, even  to  a  greater  extent  than  the  eight  hours  per 
week  contemplated  in  the  new  Education  bill,  in  order  to 
enable  them  to  attend  technical  and  other  classes  in  the 
daytime.  Finally,  wherever  practicable,  the  hours  of 
adult  labor  should  be  reduced  to  not  more  than  forty- 
eight  per  week,  without  reduction  of  the  standard  rates  of 
wages.  There  can  be  no  economic  or  other  justification 
for  keeping  any  man  or  women  to  work  for  long  hours, 
or  at  overtime,  whilst  others  are  unemployed. 

Social  Insurance  Against  Unemployment 

In  so  far  as  the  government  fails  to  prevent  unemploy- 
ment— whenever  it  finds  it  impossible  to  discover  for  any 
willing  worker,  man  or  woman,  a  suitable  situation  at  the 
standard  rate — the  Labor  party  holds  that  the  government 
must,  in  the  interest  of  the  community  as  a  whole,  pro- 
vide him  or  her  with  adequate  maintenance,  either  with 
such  arrangements  for  honorable  employment  or  with 
such  useful  training  as  may  be  found  practicable,  according 
to  age,  health  and  previous  occupation.  In  many  ways  the 
best  form  of  provision  for  those  who  must  be  unemployed, 
because  the  industrial  organization  of  the  community  so 
far  breaks  down  as  to  be  temporarily  unable  to  set  them  to 
work,  is  the  Out  of  Work  Benefit  afforded  by  a  well  ad- 
ministered trade  union.  This  is  a  special  tax  on  the  trade 
unionists  themselves  which  they  have  voluntarily  under- 
taken, but  towards  which  they  have  a  right  to  claim  a 
public  subvention — a  subvention  which  was  actually 

[18! 


granted  by  Parliament  (though  only  to  the  extent  of  a 
couple  of  shillings  or  so  per  week)  under  Part  II  of  the 
Insurance  act. 

The  arbitrary  withdrawal  by  the  government  in  1915 
of  this  statutory  right  of  the  trade  unions  was  one  of  the 
least  excusable  of  the  war  economies ;  and  the  Labor  party 
must  insist  on  the  resumption  of  this  subvention  immedi- 
ately the  war  ceases,  and  on  its  increase  to  at  least  half  the 
amount  spent  in  Out  of  Work  Benefit.  The  extension  of 
state  unemployment  insurance  to  other  occupations  may 
afford  a  convenient  method  of  providing  for  such  of  the 
unemployed,  especially  in  the  case  of  badly  paid  women 
workers  and  the  less  skilled  men,  whom  it  is  difficult  to 
organize  in  trade  unions.  But  the  weekly  rate  of  the  state 
unemployment  benefit  needs,  in  these  days  of  high  prices, 
to  be  considerably  raised ;  whilst  no  industry  ought  to  be 
compulsorily  brought  within  its  scope  against  the  declared 
will  of  the  workers  concerned,  and  especially  of  their  trade 
unions.  In  the  twentieth  century  there  must  be  no  ques- 
tion of  driving  the  unemployed  to  anything  so  obsolete 
and  discredited  as  either  private  charity,  with  its  haphazard 
and  ill  considered  doles,  or  the  Poor  law,  with  the  futili- 
ties and  barbarities  of  its  "Stone  Yard,"  or  its  "Able- 
Bodied  Test  Workhouse."  Only  on  the  basis  of  a  uni- 
versal application  of  the  Policy  of  the  National  Minimum, 
affording  complete  security  against  destitution,  in  sick- 
ness and  health,  in  good  times  and  bad  alike,  to  every  mem- 
ber of  the  community  can  any  worthy  social  order  be  built 
up. 

THE  DEMOCRATIC  CONTROL  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  universal  application  of  the  policy  of  the  national 
minimum  is,  of  course,  only  the  first  of  the  pillars  of  the 


house  that  the  Labor  party  intends  to  see  built.  What 
marks  off  this  party  most  distinctly  from  any  of  the  other 
political  parties  is  its  demand  for  the  full  and  genuine 
adoption  of  the  principle  of  democracy.  The  first  condi- 
tion of  democracy  is  effective  personal  freedom.  This  has 
suffered  so  many  encroachments  during  the  war  that  it  is 
necessary  to  state  with  clearness  that  the  complete  removal 
of  all  the  war-time  restrictions  on  freedom  of  speech,  free- 
dom of  publication,  freedom  of  the  press,  freedom  of  travel, 
and  freedom  of  choice  of  place  of  residence  and  kind  of 
employment  must  take  place  the  day  after  peace  is  de- 
dared.  The  Labor  party  declares  emphatically  against 
any  continuance  of  the  Military  Service  acts  a  moment 
longer  than  the  imperative  requirements  of  the  war  excuse. 
But  individual  freedom  is  of  little  use  without  complete 
political  rights.  The  Labor  party  sees  its  repeated  de- 
mands largely  conceded  in  the  present  Representation  of 
the  People  act,  but  not  yet  wholly  satisfied.  The  party 
stands,  as  heretofore,  for  complete  adult  suffrage,  with  not 
more  than  a  three  months'  residential  qualification,  for 
effective  provision  for  absent  electors  to  vote,  for  absolute- 
ly equal  rights  for  both  sexes,  for  the  same  freedom  to 
exercise  civic  rights  for  the  "common  soldier"  as  for  the 
officer,  for  shorter  Parliaments,  for  the  complete  abolition 
of  the  House  of  Lords,  and  for  a  most  strenuous  opposi- 
tion to  any  new  Second  Chamber,  whether  elected  or  not, 
having  in  it  any  element  of  heredity  or  privilege,  or  of  the 
control  of  the  House  of  Commons  by  any  party  or  class. 
But  unlike  the  Conservative  and  Liberal  parties,  the  Labor 
party  insists  on  democracy  in  industry  as  well  as  in  gov- 
ernment. It  demands  the  progressive  elimination  from 
the  control  of  industry  of  the  private  capitalist,  individual 
or  joint-stock;  and  the  setting  free  of  all  who  work, 

[*o] 


whether  by  hand  or  by  brain,  for  the  service  of  the  com- 
munity, and  of  the  community  only.  And  the  Labor 
party  refuses  absolutely  to  believe  that  the  British  people 
will  permanently  tolerate  any  reconstruction  or  perpetua- 
tion of  the  disorganization,  waste,  and  inefficiency  involved 
in  the  abandonment  of  British  industry  to  a  jostling 
crowd  of  separate  private  employers,  with  their  minds  bent, 
not  on  the  service  of  the  community,  but — by  the  very  law 
of  their  being — only  on  the  utmost  possible  profiteering. 
What  the  nation  needs  is  undoubtedly  a  great  bound  on- 
ward in  its  aggregate  productivity.  But  this  cannot  be 
secured  merely  by  pressing  the  manual  workers  to  more 
strenuous  toil,  or  even  by  encouraging  the  "Captains  of 
Industry"  to  a  less  wasteful  organization  of  their  several 
enterprises  on  a  profit-making  basis.  What  the  Labor 
party  looks  to  is  a  genuinely  scientific  reorganization  of 
the  nation's  industry,  no  longer  deflected  by  individual 
profiteering,  on  the  basis  of  the  common  ownership  of  the 
means  of  production,  the  equitable  sharing  of  the  proceeds 
among  all  who  participate  in  any  capacity  and  only  among 
these,  and  the  adoption,  in  particular  services  and  occupa- 
tions, of  those  systems  and  methods  of  administration  and 
control  that  may  be  found,  in  practice,  best  to  promote  the 
public  interest. 

Immediate  Nationalization 

The  Labor  party  stands  not  merely  for  the  principle 
of  the  common  ownership  of  the  nation's  land,  to  be  ap- 
plied as  suitable  opportunities  occur,  but  also,  specifically, 
for  the  immediate  nationalization  of  railways,  mines,  and 
the  production  of  electrical  power.  We  hold  that  the 
very  foundation  of  any  successful  reorganization  of  British 
industry  must  necessarily  be  found  in  the  provision  of  the 


utmost  facilities  for  transport  and  communication,  the 
production  of  power  at  the  cheapest  possible  rate,  and 
the  most  economical  supply  of  both  electrical  energy  and 
coal  to  every  corner  of  the  kingdom.  Hence  the  Labor 
party  stands,  unhesitatingly,  for  the  national  ownership 
and  administration  of  the  railways  and  canals,  and  their 
union,  along  with  harbors  and  roads,  and  the  posts  and 
telegraphs — not  to  say  also  the  great  lines  of  steamers 
which  could  at  once  be  owned,  if  not  immediately  directly 
managed  in  detail,  by  the  government — in  a  united  na- 
tional service  of  communication  and  transport;  to  be 
worked,  unhampered  by  capitalist,  private,  or  purely  local 
interests  (and  with  a  steadily  increasing  participation  pi 
the  organized  workers  in  the  management,  both  central 
and  local),  exclusively  for  the  common  good.  If  any  gov- 
ernment should  be  so  misguided  as  to  propose,  when  peace 
comes,  to  hand  the  railways  back  to  the  shareholders,  or 
should  show  itself  so  spendthrift  of  the  nation's  property 
as  to  give  these  shareholders  any  enlarged  franchise  by 
presenting  them  with  the  economies  of  unification  or  the 
profits  of  increased  railway  rates,  or  so  extravagant  as  to 
bestow  public  funds  on  the  re-equipment  of  privately 
owned  lines — all  of  which  things  are  now  being  privately 
intrigued  for  by  the  railway  interests, — the  Labor  party 
will  offer  any  such  project  the  most  strenuous  opposition. 
The  railways  and  canals,  like  the  roads,  must  henceforth 
belong  to  the  public. 

In  the  production  of  electricity,  for  cheap  power,  light, 
and  heating,  this  country  has  so  far  failed,  because  of  ham- 
pering private  interests,  to  take  advantage  of  science.  Even 
in  the  largest  cities  we  still  "peddle"  our  electricity  on  a 
contemptibly  small  scale.  What  is  called  for  immediately 
after  the  war  is  the  erection  of  a  score  of  gigantic  "super- 

[•**] 


power  stations,"  which  could  generate,  at  incredibly  cheap 
rates,  enough  electricity  for  the  use  of  every  industrial 
establishment  and  every  private  household  in  Great 
Britain;  the  present  municipal  and  joint-stock  electrical 
plants  being  universally  linked  up  and  used  for  local  dis- 
tribution. This  is  inevitably  the  future  of  electricity.  It 
is  plain  that  so  great  and  so  powerful  an  enterprise,  affect- 
ing every  industrial  enterprise  and,  eventually,  every  house- 
hold, must  not  be  allowed  to  pass  into  the  hands  of  private 
capitalists.  They  are  already  pressing  the  government  for 
the  concession,  and  neither  the  Liberal  nor  the  Conserva- 
tive party  has  yet  made  up  its  mind  to  a  refusal  of  such  a 
new  endowment  of  profiteering  in  what  will  presently  be 
the  life  blood  of  modern  productive  industry.  The  Labor 
party  demands  that  the  production  of  electricity  on  the 
necessary  gigantic  scale  shall  be  made  from  the  start  (with 
suitable  arrangements  for  municipal  cooperation  in  local 
distribution)  a  national  enterprise,  to  be  worked  exclu- 
sively with  the  object  of  supplying  the  whole  kingdom  with 
the  cheapest  possible  power,  light,  and  heat. 

But  with  railways  and  the  generation  of  electricity  in 
the  hands  of  the  public,  it  would  be  criminal  folly  to  leave 
to  the  present  one  thousand  five  hundred  colliery  com- 
panies the  power  of  "holding  up"  the  coal  supply.  These 
are  now  all  working  under  public  control,  on  terms  that 
virtually  afford  to  their  shareholders  a  statutory  guarantee 
of  their  swollen  incomes.  The  Labor  party  demands  the 
immediate  nationalization  of  mines,  the  extraction  of  coal 
and  iron  being  worked  as  a  public  service  (with  a  steadily 
increasing  participation  in  the  management,  both  central 
and  local,  of  the  various  grades  of  persons  employed )  ;  and 
the  whole  business  of  the  retail  distribution  of  household 
coal  being  undertaken,  as  a  local  public  service,  by  the 


elected  municipal  or  county  councils.  And  there  is  no  rea- 
son why  coal  should  fluctuate  in  price  any  more  than  rail- 
way fares,  or  why  the  consumer  should  be  made  to  pay 
more  in  winter  than  in  summer,  or  in  one  town  than  an- 
other. What  the  Labor  party  would  aim  at  is,  for  house- 
hold coal  of  standard  quality,  a  fixed  and  uniform  price 
for  the  whole  kingdom,  payable  by  rich  and  poor  alike, 
as  unalterable  as  the  penny  postage  stamp. 

But  the  sphere  of  immediate  nationalization  is  not  re- 
stricted to  these  great  industries.  We  shall  never  succeed 
in  putting  the  gigantic  system  of  health  insurance  on  a 
proper  footing,  or  secure  a  clear  field  for  the  beneficent 
work  of  the  Friendly  Societies,  or  gain  a  free  hand  for 
the  necessary  development  of  the  urgently  called  for  Min- 
istry of  Health  and  the  Local  Public  Health  Service, 
until  the  nation  expropriates  the  profit-making  industrial 
insurance  companies,  which  now  so  tyrannously  exploit  the 
people  with  their  wasteful  house-to-house  industrial  life 
assurance.  Only  by  such  an  expropriation  of  life  assurance 
companies  can  we  secure  the  universal  provision,  free  from 
the  burdensome  toll  of  weekly  pence,  of  the  indispensable 
funeral  benefit.  Nor  is  it  in  any  sense  a  "class"  measure. 
Only  by  the  assumption  by  a  state  department  of  the  whole 
business  of  life  assurance  can  the  millions  of  policy-holders 
of  all  classes  be  completely  protected  against  the  possibly 
calamitous  results  of  the  depreciation  of  securities  and  sus- 
pension of  bonuses  which  the  war  is  causing.  Only  by  this 
means  can  the  great  staff  of  insurance  agents  find  their 
proper  place  as  civil  servants,  with  equitable  conditions  of 
employment,  compensation  for  any  disturbance,  and  secur- 
ity of  tenure,  in  a  nationally  organized  public  service  for 
the  discharge  of  the  steadily  increasing  functions  of  the 
government  in  vital  statistics  and  social  insurance. 


In  quite  another  sphere  the  Labor  party  sees  the  key  to 
temperance  reform  in  taking  the  entire  manufacture  and 
retailing  of  alcoholic  drink  out  of  the  hands  of  those  who 
find  profit  in  promoting  the  utmost  possible  consumption. 
This  is  essentially  a  case  in  which  the  people,  as  a  whole, 
must  deal  with  the  licensing  question  in  accordance  with 
local  opinion.  For  this  purpose,  localities  should  have 
conferred  upon  them  facilities  (a)  to  prohibit  the  sale  of 
liquor  within  their  boundaries;  (£)  to  reduce  the  number 
of  licenses  and  regulate  the  conditions  under  which  they 
may  be  held;  and  (c)  if  a  locality  decides  that  licenses  are 
to  be  granted,  to  determine  whether  such  licenses  shall  be 
under  private  or  any  form  of  public  control. 

Other  main  industries,  especially  those  now  becoming 
monopolized,  should  be  nationalized  as  opportunity  offers. 
Moreover,  the  Labor  party  holds  that  the  municipalities 
should  not  confine  their  activities  to  the  necessarily  costly 
services  of  education,  sanitation,  and  police ;  nor  yet  rest 
content  with  acquiring  control  of  the  local  water,  gas,  elec- 
tricity, and  tramways ;  but  that  every  facility  should  be  af- 
forded to  them  to  acquire  (easily,  quickly,  and  cheaply) 
all  the  land  they  require,  and  to  extend  their  enterprises  in 
housing  and  town  planning,  parks,  and  public  libraries, 
the  provision  of  music  and  the  organization  of  recreation ; 
and  also  to  undertake,  besides  the  retailing  of  coal,  other 
services  of  common  utility,  particularly  the  local  supply  of 
milk,  wherever  this  is  not  already  fully  organized  by  a 
cooperative  society. 

Control  of  Capitalist  Industry 

Meanwhile,  however,  we  ought  not  to  throw  away  the 
valuable  experience  now  gained  by  the  government  in  its 
assumption  of  the  importation  of  wheat,  wool,  metals,  and 

[•51 


other  commodities,  and  in  its  control  of  the  shipping, 
woolen,  leather,  clothing,  boot  and  shoe,  milling,  baking, 
butchering,  and  other  industries.  The  Labor  party  holds 
that,  whatever  may  have  been  the  shortcomings  of  this  gov- 
ernment importation  and  control,  it  has  demonstrably  pre- 
vented a  lot  of  "profiteering."  Nor  can  it  end  immediate- 
ly on  the  declaration  of  peace.  The  people  will  be  ex- 
tremely foolish  if  they  ever  allow  their  indispensable  in- 
dustries to  slip  back  into  the  unfettered  control  of  private 
capitalists,  who  are,  actually  at  the  instance  of  the  govern- 
ment itself,  now  rapidly  combining,  trade  by  trade,  into 
monopolist  trusts,  which  may  presently  become  as  ruthless 
in  their  extortion  as  the  worst  American  examples.  Stand- 
ing as  it  does  for  the  democratic  control  of  industry,  the 
Labor  party  would  think  twice  before  it  sanctioned  any 
abandonment  of  the  present  profitable  centralization  of 
purchase  of  raw  material;  of  the  present  carefully  organ- 
ized "rationing,"  by  joint  committees  of  the  trades  con- 
cerned, of  the  several  establishments  with  the  materials 
they  require;  of  the  present  elaborate  system  of  "costing" 
and  public  audit  of  manufacturers'  accounts,  so  as  to  stop 
the  waste  heretofore  caused  by  the  mechanical  inefficiency 
of  the  more  backward  firms;  of  the  present  salutary  pub- 
licity of  manufacturing  processes  and  expenses  thereby  en- 
sured; and,  on  the  information  thus  obtained  (in  order 
never  again  to  revert  to  the  old-time  profiteering)  of  the 
present  rigid  fixing,  for  standardized  products,  of  maxi- 
mum prices  at  the  factory,  at  the  warehouse  of  the  whole- 
sale trader,  and  in  the  retail  shop.  This  question  of  the 
retail  prices  of  household  commodities  is  emphatically  the 
most  practical  of  all  political  issues  to  the  woman  elector. 
The  male  politicians  have  too  long  neglected  the  griev- 
ances of  the  small  household,  which  is  the  prey  of  every 


profiteering  combination ;  and  neither  the  Liberal  nor  the 
Conservative  party  promises,  in  this  respect,  any  amend- 
ment. This,  too,  is  in  no  sense  a  "class"  measure.  It  is, 
so  the  Labor  party  holds,  just  as  much  the  function  of 
government,  and  just  as  necessary  a  part  of  the  democratic 
regulation  of  industry,  to  safeguard  the  interests  of  the 
community  as  a  whole,  and  those  of  all  grades  and  sections 
of  private  consumers,  in  the  matter  of  prices,  as  it  is, 
by  the  Factory  and  Trade  Boards  acts,  to  protect  the 
rights  of  the  wage-earning  producers  in  the  matter  of 
wages,  hours  of  labor,  and  sanitation. 

A  REVOLUTION  IN  NATIONAL  FINANCE 

In  taxation,  also,  the  interests  of  the  professional  and 
house-keeping  classes  are  at  one  with  those  of  the  manual 
workers.  Too  long  has  our  national  finance  been  regu- 
lated, contrary  to  the  teaching  of  political  economy,  ac- 
cording to  the  wishes  of  the  possessing  classes  and  the 
profits  of  the  financiers.  The  colossal  expenditure  in- 
volved in  the  present  war  (of  which,  against  the  protest 
of  the  Labor  party,  only  a  quarter  has  been  raised  by 
taxation,  whilst  three-quarters  have  been  borrowed  at 
onerous  rates  of  interest,  to  be  a  burden  on  the  nation's 
future)  brings  things  to  a  crisis.  When  peace  comes, 
capital  will  be  needed  for  all  sorts  of  social  enterprises, 
and  the  resources  of  government  will  necessarily  have  to 
be  vastly  greater  than  they  were  before  the  war.  Mean- 
while innumerable  new  private  fortunes  are  being  heaped 
up  by  those  who  have  taken  advantage  of  the  nation's  needs; 
and  the  one-tenth  of  the  population  which  owns  nine- 
tenths  of  the  riches  of  the  United  Kingdom,  far  from  being 
made  poorer,  will  find  itself,  in  the  aggregate,  as  a  result 

1*7] 


of  the  war,  drawing  in  rent  and  interest  and  dividends  a 
larger  nominal  income  than  ever  before.  Such  a  position 
demands  a  revolution  in  national  finance.  How  are  we 
to  discharge  a  public  debt  that  may  well  reach  the  almost 
incredible  figure  of  seven  thousand  million  pounds  ster- 
ling, and  at  the  same  time  raise  an  annual  revenue  which, 
for  local  as  well  as  central  government,  must  probably 
reach  one  thousand  millions  a  year?  It  is  over  this  prob- 
lem of  taxation  that  the  various  political  parties  will  be 
found  to  be  most  sharply  divided. 

The  Labor  party  stands  for  such  a  system  of  taxation 
as  will  yield  all  the  necessary  revenue  to  the  government 
without  encroaching  on  the  prescribed  national  minimum 
standard  of  life  of  any  family  whatsoever,  without  ham- 
pering production  or  discouraging  any  useful  personal 
effort,  and  with  the  nearest  possible  approximation  to 
equality  of  sacrifice.  We  definitely  repudiate  all  pro- 
posals for  a  protective  tariff,  in  whatever  specious  guise 
they  may  be  cloaked,  as  a  device  for  burdening  the  con- 
sumer with  unnecessarily  enhanced  prices,  to  the  profit  of 
the  capitalist  employer  or  landed  proprietor,  who  avowed- 
ly expects  his  profit  or  rent  to  be  increased  thereby.  We 
shall  strenuously  oppose  any  taxation,  of  whatever  kind, 
which  would  increase  the  price  of  food  or  of  any  other 
necessary  of  life.  We  hold  that  indirect  taxation  on  com- 
modities, whether  by  customs  or  excise,  should  be  strictly 
limited  to  luxuries,  and  concentrated  principally  on  those 
of  which  it  is  socially  desirable  that  the  consumption  should 
be  actually  discouraged.  We  are  at  one  with  the  manu- 
facturer, the  farmer,  and  the  trader  in  objecting  to  taxes 
interfering  with  production  or  commerce,  or  hampering 
transport  and  communications.  In  all  these  matters — once 
more  in  contrast  with  the  other  political  parties,  and  by  no 

[*f] 


means  in  the  interests  of  the  wage-earners  alone — the 
Labor  party  demands  that  the  very  definite  teachings  of 
economic  science  should  no  longer  be  disregarded  as  they 
have  been  in  the  past. 

For  the  raising  of  the  greater  part  of  the  revenue  now 
required,  the  Labor  party  looks  to  the  direct  taxation  of  the 
incomes  above  the  necessary  cost  of  family  maintenance; 
and,  for  the  requisite  effort  to  pay  off  the  national  debt,  to 
the  direct  taxation  of  private  fortunes  both  during  life  and 
at  death.  The  income  tax  and  super-tax  ought  at  once  to 
be  thoroughly  reformed  in  assessment  and  collection,  in 
abatements  and  allowances  and  in  graduation  and  differ- 
entiation, so  as  to  levy  the  required  total  sum  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  the  real  sacrifice  of  all  the  tax-payers  as 
nearly  as  possible  equal.  This  would  involve  assessment 
by  families  instead  of  by  individual  persons,  so  that  the 
'burden  is  alleviated  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  persons 
to  be  maintained.  It  would  involve  the  raising  of  the 
present  unduly  low  minimum  income  assessable  to  the  tax, 
and  the  lightening  of  the  present  unfair  burden  on  the 
great  mass  of  professional  and  small  trading  classes  by  a 
new  scale  of  graduation,  rising  from  a  penny  in  the  pound 
on  the  smallest  assessable  income  up  to  sixteen  or  even 
nineteen  shillings  in  the  pounds  on  the  highest  income  of 
the  millionaires.  It  would  involve  bringing  into  assess- 
ment the  numerous  windfalls  of  profit  that  now  escape, 
and  a  further  differentiation  between  essentially  different 
kinds  of  income.  The  excess  profits  tax  might  well  be 
retained  in  an  appropriate  form ;  whilst,  so  long  as  mining 
royalties  exist,  the  mineral  rights  duty  ought  to  be  in- 
creased. The  steadily  rising  unearned  increment  of  urban 
and  mineral  land  ought,  by  an  appropriate  direct  taxation 
of  land  values,  to  be  wholly  brought  into  the  public  ex- 

1*9] 


chequer.  At  the  same  time,  for  the  service  and  redemption 
of  the  national  debt,  the  death  duties  ought  to  be  regradu- 
ated,  much  more  strictly  collected,  and  greatly  increased. 
In  this  matter  we  need,  in  fact,  completely  to  reverse  our 
point  of  view,  and  to  rearrange  the  whole  taxation  of  in- 
heritance from  the  standpoint  of  asking  what  is  the  maxi- 
mum amount  that  any  rich  man  should  be  permitted  at 
death  to  divert,  by  his  will,  from  the  national  exchequer, 
which  should  normally  be  the  heir  to  all  private  riches  in 
excess  of  a  quite  moderate  amount  by  way  of  family  pro- 
vision. But  all  this  will  not  suffice.  It  will  be  impera- 
tive at  the  earliest  possible  moment  to  free  the  nation  from 
at  any  rate  the  greater  part  of  its  new  load  of  interest- 
bearing  debt  for  loans  which  ought  to  have  been  levied 
as  taxation ;  and  the  Labor  party  stands  for  a  special  cap- 
ital levy  to  pay  off,  if  not  the  whole,  a  very  substantial 
part  of  the  entire  national  debt — a  capital  levy  chargeable' 
like  the  death  duties  on  all  property,  but  (in  order  to 
secure  approximate  equality  of  sacrifice)  with  exemption 
of  the  smallest  savings,  and  for  the  rest  at  rates  very  steeply 
graduated,  so  as  to  take  only  a  small  contribution  from  the 
little  people  and  a  very  much  larger  percentage  from  the 
millionaires. 

Over  this  issue  of  how  the  financial  burden  of  the  war 
is  to  be  borne,  and  how  the  necessary  revenue  is  to  be 
raised,  the  greatest  political  battles  will  be  fought.  In  thfe 
matter  the  Labor  party  claims  the  support  of  four-fifths 
of  the  whole  nation,  for  the  interests  of  the  clerk,  the 
teacher,  the  doctor,  the  minister  of  religion,  the  average 
retail  shopkeeper  and  trader,  and  all  the  mass  of  those  liv- 
ing on  small  incomes  are  identical  with  those  of  the  artisan. 
The  landlords,  the  financial  magnates,  the  possessors  of 
great  fortunes  will  not,  as  a  class,  willingly  forego  the 

[30] 


relative  immunity  that  they  have  hitherto  enjoyed.  The 
present  unfair  subjection  of  the  cooperative  society  to  an 
excess  profits  tax  on  the  "profits"  which  it  has  never  made 
— specially  dangerous  as  "the  thin  end  of  the  wedge"  of 
penal  taxation  of  this  laudable  form  of  democratic  enter- 
prise— will  not  be  abandoned  without  a  struggle.  Every 
possible  effort  will  be  made  to  juggle  with  the  taxes,  so 
as  to  place  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  mass  of  laboring  folk 
and  upon  the  struggling  households  of  the  professional 
men  and  small  traders  (as  was  done  after  every  previous 
war) — whether  by  customs  or  excise  duties,  by  industrial 
monopolies,  by  unnecessarily  high  rates  of  postage  and 
railway  fares,  or  by  a  thousand  and  one  other  ingenious 
devices — an  unfair  share  of  the  national  burden.  Against 
these  efforts  the  Labor  party  will  take  the  firmest  stand. 

THE  SURPLUS  FOR  THE  COMMON  GOOD 

In  the  disposal  of  the  surplus  above  the  standard  of 
life,  society  has  hitherto  gone  as  far  wrong  as  in  its  neglect 
to  secure  the  necessary  basis  of  any  genuine  industrial 
efficiency  or  decent  social  order.  We  have  allowed  the 
riches  of  our  mines,  the  rental  value  of  the  lands  superior 
to  the  margin  of  cultivation,  the  extra  profits  of  the  for- 
tunate capitalists,  even  the  material  outcome  of  scientific 
discoveries — which  ought  by  now  to  have  made  this 
Britain  of  ours  immune  from  class  poverty  or  from  any 
widespread  destitution — to  be  absorbed  by  individual  pro- 
prietors and  then  devoted  very  largely  to  the  senseless 
luxury  of  an  idle  rich  class.  Against  this  misappropriation 
of  the  wealth  of  the  community,  the  Labor  party — speak- 
ing in  the  interests  not  of  the  wage-earners  alone,  but  of 
every  grade  and  section  of  producers  by  hand  or  by  brain, 


not  to  mention  also  those  of  the  generations  that  are  to 
succeed  us,  and  of  the  permanent  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity— emphatically  protests.  One  main  pillar  of  the 
house  that  the  Labor  party  intends  to  build  is  the  future 
appropriation  of  the  surplus,  not  to  the  enlargement  of 
any  individual  fortune,  but  to  the  common  good.  It  is 
from  this  constantly  arising  surplus  (to  be  secured,  on  the 
one  hand,  by  nationalization  and  municipalization  and, 
on  the  other,  by  the  steeply  graduated  taxation  of  private 
income  and  riches)  that  will  have  to  be  found  the  new 
capital  which  the  community  day  by  day  needs  for  the 
perpetual  improvement  and  increase  of  its  various  enter- 
prises, for  which  we  shall  decline  to  be  dependent  on  the 
usury-exacting  financiers.  It  is  from  the  same  source  that 
has  to  be  defrayed  the  public  provision  for  the  sick  and 
infirm  of  all  kinds  (including  that  for  maternity  and  in- 
fancy) which  is  still  so  scandalously  insufficient;  for  the 
aged  and  those  prematurely  incapacitated  by  accident  or 
disease,  now  in  many  ways  so  imperfectly  cared  for;  for 
the  education  alike  of  children,  of  adolescents,  and  of 
adults,  in  which  the  Labor  party  demands  a  genuine  equal- 
ity of  opportunity,  overcoming  all  differences  of  material 
circumstances ;  and  for  the  organization  of  public  improve- 
ments of  all  kinds,  including  the  brightening  of  the  lives 
of  those  now  condemned  to  almost  ceaseless  toil,  and  a 
great  development  of  the  means  of  recreation.  From  the 
same  source  must  come  the  greatly  increased  public  pro- 
vision that  the  Labor  party  will  insist  on  being  made  for 
scientific  investigation  and  original  research,  in  every 
branch  of  knowledge,  not  to  say  also  for  the  promotion 
of  music,  literature,  and  fine  art,  which  have  been  under 
capitalism  so  greatly  neglected,  and  upon  which,  so  the 
Labor  party  holds,  any  real  development  of  civilization 


fundamentally  depends.  Society,  like  the  individual,  does 
not  live  by  bread  alone — does  not  exist  only  for  perpetual 
wealth  production.  It  is  in  the  proposal  for  this  appro- 
priation of  every  surplus  for  the  common  godd — in  the 
vision  of  its  resolute  use  for  the  building  up  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  instead  of  for  the  magnification  of  indi- 
vidual fortunes — that  the  Labor  party,  as  the  party  of  the 
producers  by  hand  or  by  brain,  most  distinctively  marks  it- 
self off  from  the  older  political  parties,  standing,  as  these 
do,  essentially  for  the  maintenance,  unimpaired,  of  the  per- 
petual private  mortgage  upon  the  annual  product  of  the 
nation  that  is  involved  in  the  individual  ownership  of  land 
and  capital. 

THE  STREET  OF  TOMORROW 

The  house  which  the  Labor  party  intends  to  build,  the 
four  pillars  of  which  have  now  been  described,  does  not 
stand  alone  in  the  world.  Where  will  it  be  in  the  street 
of  tomorrow?  If  we  repudiate,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
imperialism  that  seeks  to  dominate  other  races  or  to  impose 
our  own  will  on  other  parts  of  the  British  empire,  so  we 
disclaim  equally  any  conception  of  a  selfish  and  insular 
"non-interventionism,"  unregarding  of  our  special  obliga- 
tions to  our  fellow-citizens  overseas,  of  the  corporate  duties 
of  one  nation  to  another,  of  the  moral  claims  upon  us  of 
the  non-adult  races,  and  of  our  own  indebtedness  to  the 
world  of  which  we  are  part.  We  look  for  an  ever-increas- 
ing intercourse,  a  constantly  developing  exchange  of  com- 
modities, a  continually  expanding  friendly  co-operation 
among  all  the  peoples  of  the  world.  With  regard  to  that 
great  commonwealth  of  all  races,  all  colors,  all  religions, 
and  all  degrees  of  civilization,  that  we  call  the  British 

[33] 


empire,  the  Labor  party  stands  for  its  maintenance  and 
its  progressive  development  on  the  lines  of  local  autonomy 
and  "Home  Rule  All  Round";  the  fullest  respect  for  the 
rights  of  each  people,  whatever  its  color,  to  all  the  demo- 
cratic self-government  of  which  it  is  capable,  and  to  the 
proceeds  of  its  own  toil  upon  the  resources  of  its  own  terri- 
torial home;  and  the  closest  possible  co-operation  among 
all  the  various  members  of  what  has  become  essentially 
not  an  empire  in  the  old  sense,  but  a  Britannic  alliance. 

We  desire  to  maintain  the  most  intimate  relations  with 
the  Labor  parties  overseas.  Like  them,  we  have  no  sym- 
pathy with  the  projects  of  "Imperial  Federation,"  in  so 
far  as  these  imply  the  subjection  to  a  common  imperial 
legislature  wielding  coercive  power  (including  dangerous 
facilities  for  coercive  imperial  taxation  and  for  enforced 
military  service),  either  of  the  existing  self-governing 
Dominions,  whose  autonomy  would  be  thereby  invaded, 
or  of  the  United  Kingdom,  whose  freedom  of  democratic 
self-development  would  be  thereby  hampered,  or  of  India 
and  the  colonial  dependencies,  which  would  thereby  run 
the  risk  of  being  further  exploited  for  the  benefit  of  a 
"White  Empire."  We  do  not  intend,  by  any  such  "Im- 
perial Senate,"  either  to  bring  the  plutocracy  of  Canada 
and  South  Africa  to  the  aid  of  the  British  aristocracy,  or 
to  enable  the  landlords  and  financiers  of  the  mother  coun- 
try to  unite  in  controlling  the  growing  popular  democracies 
overseas.  The  autonomy  of  each  self-governing  part  of 
the  empire  must  be  intact. 

What  we  look  for,  besides  a  constant  progress  in  demo- 
cratic self-government  of  every  part  of  the  Britannic  alli- 
ance, and  especially  in  India,  is  a  continuous  participation 
of  the  ministers  of  the  Dominions,  of  India,  and  event- 
ually of  other  dependencies  (perhaps  by  means  of  their 

[34] 


own  ministers  specially  resident  in  London  for  this  pur- 
pose) in  the  most  confidential  deliberations  of  the  Cabinet, 
so  far  as  foreign  policy  and  imperial  affairs  are  concerned ; 
and  the  annual  assembly  of  an  Imperial  Council,  repre- 
senting all  constituents  of  the  Britannic  alliance  and  all 
parties  in  their1  local  legislatures,  which  should  discuss  all 
matters  of  common  interest,  but  only  in  order  to  make 
recommendations  for  the  simultaneous  consideration  of 
the  various  autonomous  local  legislatures  of  what  should 
increasingly  take  the  constitutional  form  of  an  alliance  of 
free  nations.  And  we  carry  the  idea  further.  As  regards 
our  relations  to  foreign  countries,  we  disavow  and  dis- 
claim any  desire  or  intention  to  dispossess  or  to  impoverish 
any  other  state  or  nation.  We  seek  no  increase  of  territory. 
We  disclaim  all  idea  of  "economic  war."  We  ourselves 
object  to  all  protective  customs  tariffs;  but  we  hold  that 
each  nation  must  be  left  free  to  do  what  it  thinks  best  for 
its  own  economic  development,  without  thought  of  in- 
juring others.  We  believe  that  nations  are  in  no  way 
damaged  by  each  other's  economic  prosperity  or  commer- 
cial progress;  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  they  are  actually 
themselves  mutually  enriched  thereby.  We  would  there- 
fore put  an  end  to  the  old  entanglements  and  mystifica- 
tions of  secret  diplomacy  and  the  formation  of  leagues 
against  leagues.  We  stand  for  the  immediate  establish- 
ment, actually  as  a  part  of  the  treaty  of  peace  with  which 
the  present  war  will  end,  of  a  universal  league  or  society 
of  nations,  a  supernational  authority,  with  an  interna- 
tional high  court  to  try  all  justiciable  issues  between  na- 
tions, an  international  legislature  to  enact  such  common 
laws  as  can  be  mutually  agreed  upon,  and  an  international 
council  of  mediation  to  endeavor  to  settle  without  ultimate 
conflict  even  those  disputes  which  are  not  justiciable.  We 

[35] 


would  have  all  the  nations  of  the  world  most  solemnly 
undertake  and  promise  to  make  common  cause  against  any 
one  of  them  that  broke  away  from  this  fundamental  agree- 
ment. The  world  has  suffered  too  much  from  war  for 
the  Labor  party  to  have  any  other  policy  than  that  of  last- 
ing peace. 

MORE  LIGHT — BUT  ALSO  MORE  WARMTH  ! 

The  Labor  party  is  far  from  assuming  that  it  possesses 
a  key  to  open  all  locks,  or  that  any  policy  which  it  can 
formulate  will  solve  all  the  problems  that  beset  us.  But 
we  deem  it  important  to  ourselves  as  well  as  to  those  who 
may,  on  the  one  hand,  wish  to  join  the  party,  or,  on  the 
other,  to  take  up  arms  against  it,  to  make  quite  clear  and 
definite  our  aim  and  purpose.  The  Labor  party  wants 
that  aim  and  purpose,  as  set  forth  in  the  preceding  pages, 
with  all  its  might.  It  calls  for  more  warmth  in  politics, 
for  much  less  apathetic  acquiescence  in  the  miseries  that 
exist,  for  none  of  the  cynicism  that  saps  the  life  of  leisure. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Labor  party  has  no  belief  in  any 
of  the  problems  of  the  world  being  solved  by  good  will 
alone.  Good  will  without  knowledge  is  warmth  without 
light.  Especially  in  all  the  complexities  of  politics,  in  the 
still  undeveloped  science  of  society,  the  Labor  party  stands 
for  increased  study,  for  the  scientific  investigation  of  each 
succeeding  problem,  for  the  deliberate  organization  of  re- 
search, and  for  a  much  more  rapid  dissemination  among 
the  whole  people  of  all  the  science  that  exists.  And  it  is 
perhaps  specially  the  Labor  party  that  has  the  duty  of 
placing  this  advancement  of  science  in  the  forefront  of  its 
political  programme.  What  the  Labor  party  stands  for 
in  all  fields  of  life  is,  essentially,  democratic  co-operation  ; 

[36] 


and  co-operation  involves  a  common  purpose  which  can  be 
agreed  to,  a  common  plan  which  can  be  explained  and  dis- 
cussed, and  such  a  measure  of  success  in  the  adaptation  of 
means  to  ends  as  will  ensure  a  common  satisfaction.  An 
autocratic  sultan  may  govern  without  science  if  his  whim 
is  law.  A  plutocratic  party  may  choose  to  ignore  science, 
if  it  is  heedless  whether  its  pretended  solutions  of  social 
problems  that  may  win  political  triumphs  ultimately  suc- 
ceed or  fail.  But  no  Labor  party  can  hope  to  maintain 
its  position  unless  its  proposals  are,  in  fact,  the  outcome  of 
the  best  political  science  of  its  time,  or  to  fulfil  its  purpose 
unless  that  science  is  continually  wresting  new  fields  from 
human  ignorance.  Hence,  although  the  purpose  of  the 
Labor  party  must,  by  the  law  of  its  being,  remain  for  all 
time  unchanged,  its  policy  and  its  programme  will,  we 
hope,  undergo  a  perpetual  development,  as  knowledge 
grows  and  as  new  phases  of  the  social  problem  present 
themselves,  in  a  continually  finer  adjustment  of  our  meas- 
ures to  our  ends.  If  law  is  the  mother  of  freedom,  science, 
to  the  Labor  party,  must  be  the  parent  of  law. 


37] 


MANIFESTO  TO  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

FROM  THE  ENGLISH  FELLOWSHIP 

OF  RECONCILIATION 


The  Fellowship  has  been  formed  to  bind  together  men 
and  women  who  believe  that  the  spirit  of  strife,  whether 
national,  personal,  or  economic,  can  only  be  conquered  by 
a  practical  belief  that  Love,  as  shown  forth  in  Jesus  Christ, 
is  the  only  true  basis  for  Society. 


THE  war  and  its  problems  have  brought  to  us  a  fresh 
realization  of  the  need  for  reconstructing  our  social 
and  industrial  world  from  within  by  the  Spirit  of 
Jesus   Christ.      Led   as  we  have  been   to  emphasize   the 
sacredness  of  personality,  we  have  been  compelled  to  apply 
that  principle  to  all  spheres  of  life. 

We  see  that,  under  the  present  system,  property  is  more 
regarded  than  human  life,  profits  are  considered  of  more 
importance  than  the  welfare  of  men  and  women. 

We  see  that  behind  this  war  there  is  another,  less  appap 
ent  but  more  permanent, — the  war  that  goes  on  within 
each  nation  in  its  industrial  life,  which  is  especially  mani- 
fested between  those  possessed  of  the  power  that  capital 
gives,  and  those  whose  lack  of  property  renders  them  sub- 
ject to  that  power.  We  stand  for  co-operation  in  com- 
merce and  industry  in  place  of  competition. 

By  this  we  do  not  mean  that  we  would  here  and  there 
restrain  the  power  of  the  privileged  to  exploit  others. 

[38] 


Merely  to  correct  the  more  evident  abuses  of  the  present 
system  would  not  satisfy  us.  The  whole  structure  of 
society  needs  refashioning  upon  a  different  basis.  The 
teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  leads  us  to  the  belief  that  no 
modification  of  the  competitive  system  will  remove  its 
evils :  it  must  be  abolished. 

The  problems  that  need  solving  in  the  spirit  of  that 
teaching  are  more  particularly: 

1.  The  Economic  Relations  of  Nations.     Neither  Protec- 

tion nor  Free  Trade,  as  commonly  understood,  satis- 
fies our  ideal.  We  desire  the  organization  of  inter- 
national commerce  in  the  interests  of  all. 

2.  The   Relationship    of   Men    and    Women.      Love,    as 

taught  by  Christ,  must  express  itself  in  comradeship, 
and  this  lifts  the  relationship  of  men  and  women  out 
of  the  region  of  comparison.  The  arbitrary  distinc- 
tions drawn  by  which  men  and  women  are  assigned 
wholly  separate  tasks  must,  therefore,  be  abolished, 
and  replaced  by  freedom  for  each  to  choose  the  sphere 
in  which  to  serve  the  community.  On  such  basis  alone 
can  true  companionship  stand. 

3.  The  Relationship  of  Employer  and  Employee.     These 

are  not  permanent  forms  of  human  relationship.  We 
apply  in  industrial  sense  the  injunction  :  "Call  no  man 
master;  all  ye  are  brethren."  We  do,  of  course,  de- 
sire a  better  understanding  between  the  members  of 
these  two  classes.  But  we  cannot  be  finally  satisfied 
until,  as  classes  whose  economic  interests  are  bound 
to  clash,  they  are  abolished,  and  all  are  masters  of 
their  own  lives,  and  all  are  servants  of  the  community. 

4.  The  Relationship  of  Producer  and  Consumer.     While 

Trade  Unions  have  done  a  great  work  in  their  efforts 
to  improve  conditions  of  labor,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  they  represent  sectional  interests.  In  any  scheme 
of  reconstruction  we  must  seek  to  co-ordinate  all  such 
interests,  remembering  that  every  producer  is  also  a 
consumer,  and,  more  than  that,  a  citizen. 

[39] 


There  are  certain  ideals  of  labor — revolutionary  it  m.ay 
be,  but  so  is  Christianity — implicit  in  the  foregoing,  which 
we  recognize  as  fundamentally  Christian.  They  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  following  three  points : 

1.  The  recognition  of  the  value  of  every  human  being  as 

an  individual  personality,  entitled  not  only  to  the 
necessaries  of  physical  life,  but  to  an  education  which 
will  secure  him  fullest  mental  and  spiritual  develop- 
ment. 

2.  The  reconstruction  of  industry  upon  such  a  basis  that 

a  man  may  have  the  opportunity  for  choice  of  work, 
and  a  share  in  the  direction  of  that  work,  and  may 
feel  that,  in  the  performance,  he  is  not  merely  provid- 
ing for  his  own  needs,  but  is  making  a  contribution 
to  the  community  in  which  he  lives  of  the  things 
which  have  a  real  value  for  it. 

3.  The  production  of  commodities  for  use  and  not  for 

.profit,  and  the  release  of  men  from  the  toil  involved 
in  the  manufacture  of  superfluities. 

In  fellowship  with  labor  we  are  resolved  to  strive  for 
these  ideals. 

The  Commonwealth,  in  which  each  shall  work  for  the 
good  of  all,  and  all  shall  unite  for  the  good  of  each,  is,  we 
believe,  no  mere  human  scheme,  but  the  purpose  of  God 
Himself.  We  are  conscious  that  such  an  ideal  can  only 
be  attained  if  a  spiritual  revolution  is  wrought  in  men,  and 
their  outlook  towards  their  fellow-men  is  wholly  changed. 

But  we  are  confident  that,  however  great  the  difficulties, 
God's  purpose  must  eventually  triumph. 


[40] 


"The  recent  Report  on  Reconstruction  prepared  by  a  sub-com- 
mittee of  the  British  Labor  Party  is  the  most  comprehensive 
scheme  of  economic  change  yet  formulated  by  a  responsible 
political  party.  .  .  Of  even  greater  significance  than  the  practical 
details  of  the  programme  is  its  spirit.  .  .  We  are  here  face  to  face 
with  a  new  type  of  political  philosophy,  a  type  which  rests  upon  a 
definite  view  of  the  ends  of  life  and  a  vision  of  life  as  a  whole.  .  . 
We  are  witnessing  the  emergence  of  a  full-blooded  humanism  into 
political  theory  and  practice.  Beneath  this  report,  which  is  in  its 
spirit  and  hope  an  embodiment  of  the  idealism  of  the  British  labor 
movement,  there  lies  a  clear  sense  that  every  man  has  and  is  an 
end  in  himself,  and  that  he  can  achieve  that  end  only  in  a  social 
setting  which  he  must  share  in  creating.  Its  view  is  that  man  and 
the  community  achieve  their  distinctive  ends  in  each  other.  The 
great  soul  and  the  great  society  will  arrive  together.  The  historical 
significance  of  this  document  appears  to  be  that  it  presages  a  new 
stage  in  the  development  of  the  democratic  ideal.  Perhaps  it  is 
the  beginning  of  the  long-delayed  economic  sequel  of  the  achieve- 
ment of  the  French  Revolution,  in  which  case  it  may  very  well 
turn  out  to  be  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  new  democracy." 

THE  NATION  (New  York) 


"  The  British  Labor  Party's  report  on  Reconstruction  is  obviously 
the  work  of  economic  thinkers  of  rare  vision  and  ability  and  it  may 
well  rank  among  historical  documents  of  the  highest  class.  .  .  It 
is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  we  are  here  dealing  with  a  new  thing 
in  the  literature  of  politics ;  and  we  believe  that  the  future  historian 
will  put  his  finger  upon  this  paper  as  the  point  at  which  a  new 
idea  of  the  first  magnitude  made  effectual  entrance  into  political 
theory  and  practice.  So  constant  is  the  pressure  of  this  idea  that 
it  breaks  out  here  and  there  through  the  discussion  of  concrete 
economic  measures  in  swift  gleams  of  corroborating  light.  .  .  . 
Every  period  of  political  history  is  governed  by  some  master  idea; 
liberty,  empire,  individual  rights,  and  so  forth.  The  note  of  the 
coming  period  is  already  announced  in  the  broad  and  generous 
humanism  which  this  document  reveals  as  the  characteristic  im- 
pulse of  the  British  Labor  Movement.  In  this  report,  British  labor 
appears  to  assume  definite  leadership  in  the  creation  of  the 
political  and  economic  framework  of  the  new  world." 

THE  WORLD  TOMORROW  (New  York) 


THINKING  people  everywhere  agree  that 
the  document  reprinted  in  this  pamphlet 
marks  an  epoch  in  human  affairs.  Here 
for  the  first  time  we  have  a  clear-cut,  detailed, 
inclusive,  practicable  programme  of  social  recon- 
struction, sanctioned  by  millions  of  the  world's 
most  intelligent  workers,  out  of  whose  daily 
needs  and  hopes  and  experiences  it  has  grown. 
It  is  a  programme  which,  in  its  general  outlines, 
is  of  universal  application.  And  if  the  world  is 
to  be  made  not  merely  safe  for  democracy  but 
decent  for  humanity  this  programme  must  some- 
how be  realized.  By  far  the  most  important 
thing  to  be  done  at  present  toward  realizing  it  is 
to  give  this  document  the  widest  possible  circu- 
lation. You,  the  present  reader,  can  help  in  this 
great  work  by  distributing  copies  among  your 
friends,  and  persuading  them  to  distribute  copies 
also.  Interest  the  clubs  and  organizations  to 
which  you  belong  in  sending  out  copies  to  their 
members.  Only  by  the 
widest  possible  publicity, 
-only  by  bringing  this 
epoch-making  paper  to 
the  direct  attention  of 
every  thoughtful  man  and 
woman  in  the  country,— 
can  the  social  pressure 
necessary  to  carry  through 
such  a  programme  be 
created.  Will  you  help? 


Additional  copies  of  this 
pamphlet  may  be  secured 
of  the  publisher  at  the  fol- 
lowing prices :  Single 
copies,  20  cents  each;  10 
copies,  $1.75;  25  copies, 
$3.75;  50  copies,  $7;  100 
copies,  $12.50.  Further 
reductions  on  quantities 
of  more  than  100  copies 
will  be  promptly  quoted 
upon  request.  Address: 
w.  R.  BROWNE 

WYOMING,  NEW  YORK 


UNIV.  OF  CAUF.  LIBRARY.  LOS 


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